Sketch: Facilis Decensus
by nebroadwe
Summary: Animeverse. A failed experiment leads to an unexpected encounter. Postseries AU.


**Author's Note:** _I've based this piece on events referred to in chapter 20 of Crackbunny Syndrome's _Balance of Power_ (a link to which can be found on my profile page. Go forth and read!)_

_This story is for the LiveJournal user known as aliasheist. Happy Birthday!_

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Heist considered herself an intelligent, open-minded person to whom nothing human, as the playwright said, was alien, but that didn't prevent her from slamming head-first on occasion into the self-defeating foibles of her own species. At five, it was name-calling; at nine, the Holocaust; at thirteen, the deleterious effects of the libido on the rational faculties. At her college convocation, she dutifully looked to her right and to her left as instructed, but instead of seeing two potential failures, she saw hundreds of libidinous, status-obsessed egos freed for the first time from the parental panopticon and braced herself for the worst.

She was pleasantly surprised to discover that the worst was, for the most part, nothing she hadn't already seen in high school. The stakes were higher, but the games were the same. She took up her accustomed position on the sidelines, scribbling notes and waving a distracted hand when addressed, as if too focused on analyzing the play to have time for idle chitchat. As long as she held her notional clipboard in exactly the right position, no one need know she was only doodling.

Less metaphorically, she quickly grew bored with the preoccupations of most of her classmates -- not just the manic-depressive cycles of romance, but also the endless discussions of What It All Means and How We Should Deal With It. "Live and let live" seemed a sufficient answer to the latter question; as for the former, ground over in classes and cafés seriously, cynically or drunkenly according to the hour and the company ... well, Heist had long since dismissed the idea of the universe _meaning_ anything. It simply _was_. Those who found something staring back at them when they looked into the abyss had obviously, in the glare of their own self-consciousness, mistaken a window for a mirror. _Draw the drapes, kids,_ she thought, but did not say.

Besides, what was the use of wasting time on unanswerable philosophical problems when so many unanswered scientific ones were begging for attention, traveling salesmen hawking well-organized knapsacks? A TOE would have more impact on human development than all the metaphysical maunderings of the past millennium; a conceptual framework that brought the so-called supernatural within the purview of Nature would revolutionize science and philosophy together. No legitimate scholars, she was given to understand by those to whom she hesitantly suggested the idea, conducted "psychical research" anymore, so Heist shrugged and struck out on her own, gathering evidence, hypothesizing structures, designing experiments -- settling at length on one experiment, the only one she could conduct with the resources at hand. And those, it must be said, were supplied in the main by donors subsequently astonished at their own generosity. As far as Heist was concerned, however, "permission" wasn't an issue. College was for learning, right? Independent study was encouraged, wasn't it? Nobody was using that lab, were they?

So she felt dreadfully betrayed when, after the explosion, she opened her eyes on a featureless plain interrupted only by a pair of massive stone doors. Bad enough that her last conscious thought had been _damn, how did I screw that up?_ -- worse still to discover that both consciousness and the conviction of having screwed up continued afterward. After death. _After _my_ death_. She was too frustrated to be properly frightened by the experience. _I'm too young for this -- and I was so _fucking CLOSE! She mentally reexamined what she remembered of the schematic, wishing for her laptop, wondering if she had misplaced a decimal point or something equally idiotic. _No way to tell now_. Maybe Ducky could figure it out from her notes, if any of them survived this disaster. She probably should have told him what she was planning. Not that she wished he were here, too, exactly, but the silence grated on her nerves and she would have liked to have someone to complain to. _The afterlife_, she thought as she scrambled upright, _shouldn't be so quiet._ And it certainly shouldn't smell of coffee grounds and burnt insulation ... or was that her hair?

With nothing else to do, Heist laid her hands against the doors. They felt like worked stone always did: cool, smooth, minimally adhesive. The design carved into them -- a cross between a tree and a genealogical table -- reminded her of something, but as she backed up to get a better look, the enormous panels began to swing ponderously toward her, opening to reveal ... to reveal ...

She didn't remember falling down on her butt, only scrabbling for purchase on the glabrate floor with fingers and feet gone numb and slow. Snickers buzzed in her ears like mosquitoes; the pupil of the great eye hanging slantwise behind the doors contracted slightly as the sourceless light of the plain fell upon it. She had time, as the Stygian darkness about the eye reached for her like hands and vines and tentacles, to begin to be afraid, to babble _I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry as Freud is my witness I'll never diss Nietzsche again!_

The ruthless laughter was all the answer she received until the doors slammed shut behind her.


End file.
